Author: pacificnorthwestblogger

This weekend I had gone on a ladies retreat. I hadn’t realized how much I had needed this retreat and fellowship with other Christian ladies.

The topics of the devotions focused on “I AM” passages in the Bible, where the lord used “I Am” statements in his teachings and how we need to be like sheep who stick close to the Shepard.

While I am still fairly new to the church, one of the things the Lord has been dealing with me on, is allowing others to see the real me, and where I have come from in my own journey.

This weekend I was able to be more open with these ladies than I ever have with a lot of people I have known for years.

While I don’t like talking about things I have gone through in the past, and I have recovered from them, they don’t define me. That being said these issues have helped shape who I am today.

I have built a certain level of trust with some of these ladies, so it is a bit easier to open up to them. It has also helped me to not be so afraid to share my testimony.

If I could help one young women either not have to go through some of the things I have been through, or be a listening ear and encouragement while she is going through / or recovering from some of what I have been through, it would all be worth it.

When I was younger, I never really thought about how people, especially those who are younger than me, watch my life, and how I live my life.

Once I realized that there were younger girls watching my life, I was in college, and didn’t want the responsibility, so I had shirked it.

As I got older, I began to understand that this responsibility was not a bad thing, it is something that God wants me to use for his glory.

Watching the girls grow up, who I have watched grow up from the time they were born or really little, and babysat them when they were little, I knew I had the power to have an impact, good or bad, on their lives.

Like I mentioned earlier, after the period of not wanting to deal with it and trying to escape that responsibility, I knew I couldn’t escape it. I had to make the choice of what kind of example I was going to be to those in my life. With age, maturity and God, I pray that my light will shine.

Over the past several years (more like decade) I have read different blogs written by other Christian young women, and the trend I kept seeing were very conservative young women, living in small towns or rural areas in the Midwest and South. Many of whom were stay at home daughters and / or married young and if they had jobs they were only working until the had children. That’s all fine and good when that is the life you are called to, and choose to live.

Not all of us are called to that life, and are raised differently, all still being brought up in Christian homes, and are Christians ourselves.

I couldn’t relate to the girls writing the stay at home daughter – purpose in life, only to be a wife and mother, because my life was and is on a very different path.

I grew up in the City, and went to public school for K – 12, attended a public university in a small town for four years where I lived on my own during that time.

I have had jobs since I graduated from college, and still working on a career, and earning a paycheck outside the home. I am 30 and still unmarried.

While I have not been a huge fan of living the city life, over the past few months I have been learning how to embrace it, and see that it’s not all bad.

As I have spent more time seeking God, understanding what I believe and why, as well as how it differs from what I was raised to believe I have come to realize that being in the city could do some good. There is so much good that could be done by staying in the city.

Growing up, I knew my maternal grandmother had to work, prior to being married as well as from the time my mom was a child. My Grandpa had been sick and eventually passed away. The financial responsibility then fell completely back on my grandma, as well as being a single mother. I also saw my mom work full time, my whole life.

For some of us, God has other plans and a different call for our lives than being a stay at home wife and mother, and being able to live on one income.

The direction that God is leading me in, to take this blog forward is one of how I live my faith and follow him while living in a very progressive and liberal city.

The things I love and am passionate about, like hiking, camping, knitting and Urban Homesteading haven’t changed. The Lord is calling me to bloom where I am planted, in this city.

I had an interview for a job a week ago yesterday, and I have been waiting since then for an answer as to whether I got the job or not.

This job is definitely one I would like to have, and I have definitely been praying about it this past week. Having patience and practicing it isn’t always the easiest for me. I keep reminding myself that if this job is the one that the Lord wants me to have right now, I will get it, if not I will have to move on and continue trying to understand where i go from here.

Waiting and trusting God, almost always seems to be the hard part. I am the kind of person who likes knowing what is going on, and know how things are going to work out.

This is just another lesson in leaning on God, because I don’t understand it, and how his ways are higher than mine, and if I don’t get the job that I want, God has a bigger plan and some thing else for me.

A lot of my blog posts lately have been about following God, and trusting God with everything and with what is next in our lives. I am writing about what I am going through and what I am learning about in my own life and my own walk with God.

In the past year I have really had to step out into the unknown and go. I have been having to trust God with my needs, for work, financially, what I am suppose to be doing with my life and making sure it lines up with his will.

This past year, I have really had to lean on God, and on his strength, because he knows what he is doing, and I know I can’t do it in my strength.

It was a little over a year ago, when my own world really began turning upside down, and that upside down lead from one thing to another and right now my new normal is so different from what my normal was at the beginning of 2017.

In the past three months or so, I have really been challenged to step out into the unknown and go wherever the Lord leads me and asks me to go, rather than shrinking back and staying in what is familiar and comfortable. I have seen what staying with what is familiar and comfortable does, and it’s not pretty.

I started this blog to share my story and my own experiences, trials, failures, triumphs, in my own walk with God. I am not perfect, I do not pretend to be, and I do not want to portray anything other than being a real person. I am human, I am not perfect, I make mistakes, I screw up, I can be awkward and quiet especially around new people and large groups. I don’t have it all together.

In my failures, in my doubts, in my insecurities, God has met the there. He gave me a good friend who I can talk too, and verbalize with, what’s going on in my head and what’s on my hearts. She is like a big sister to me, I know God put her in my life for a reason.

I have been seeing God work. It hasn’t been in the ways I was expecting. I have learned that with God, that what you expect and what He does can be two completely different things. I have seen him work and months down the road have what was going on make sense or see the connections in how things come together. They aren’t random, they can only be explained as that it was God who orchestrated it and worked it out.

I have been excited since I heard that Rend Collective is going on tour again this spring!

I first heard their music back in the summer of 2014, after the Art of Celebration album was released that previous spring. I fell in love with their music, as they had a sound similar to that of Mumford and Sons, yet they (Rend Collective) are Christian, where as Mumford and Sons is not .

I saw them in concert when they were on tour in early 2016, and now I am getting to see them again when they are here in March. Their first leg of their tour kicks off in the UK in February, then they are coming to the US in March and April before wrapping up their tour in the UK and Ireland in May.

I love their music, and their message, that has really struck a chord with me, and has really been something I can really relate to, and it had come at a time when I really needed to hear it, and it would sink in.

I am really excited to see them perform again, with their new album just released a few days ago.

I have tried writing this post several times already, then scrap it because it’s not coming out right or I lose my train of thought or I lose my motivation.?

2017 was a tough year, in which God has challenged me and shown me areas in which I needed to change and step up.

The Lord has really been pressing it upon my heart to dig into his word and yield my will to his.

With that, a lot has been changing. I have known for a while that I am not one of those who is called to be a missionary in far corner of the earth, rather staying closer to home. For some of us, our mission field is our own communities.

This past year, I have been figuring out and discovering who God wants me to be. I finally have a peace about the direction my life is going and that God is in control.